Jeff Klepper is an American Jewish Cantor, and one of the pioneers of the singer-songwriter style that took over American synagogue music during the second half of the 20th century. He started playing the guitar in 1962 and was a song-leader in NFTY summer camps. At those camps, he started to compose parts of the prayer by himself. Klepper was ordained as a cantor in 1980 in the HUC campus in New York.
Some scientific enterprises, like good wine, mature over a long period of time. The present publication, dating back to 1986, is the result of a similarly deliberate and painstaking process, and in view of the fact that it was undertaken with French colleagues, the wine metaphor is a most natural fit.
By: Adi Koren, Or Dotan, Avigail Harel, Nave Klil Hachoresh, Clement Robert, Courtney Blue, Yaniv Dery, Noam Peleg, Sonja Wiedemann
English translation: Courtney Blue
The earlier version, entitled “Cross-Repertoire Motifs in the Liturgical Music of Ashkenazi Tradition,” was presented at the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 2013. This article is an expanded and elaborated version of that paper.
The American Society for Jewish Music (ASJM) serves as a broad canopy for all who are interested in Jewish music. Its members include cantors, composers, educators, musicologists, ethnologists, historians, performers and interested lay members - as well as libraries, universities, synagogues and other institutions.
